'Sanditon': Season 2 Finale Recap

What a difference a season makes. As Sanditon ends Season 2 safe in the knowledge that it will be back for a third, everything about its finale feels different.  Season 1, which aired in America after the news broke that the series was canceled, its open-ended finale that separated its primary couple felt like a personal attack on all who loved Austen. And while the second season ends with just as many questions, it comes with the promise that we ought to see them answered next year. But while that's certainly a comforting thing to know, somehow the end of Season 2 doesn't necessarily feel any more Austenian than its predecessor did.

It's a bit bizarre, given how liberally Sanditon's sophomore installment samples not just from other Austen works but similar popular classic novels like Jane Eyre and The Turn of the Screw, that it is so firmly committed to denying almost everyone any sort of lasting happiness in its finale. Sure, Allison gets married off in what is essentially a starcrossed rustic fever dream, but for the second season in a row, Charlotte's story ends in tears and misery, just with a surprise engagement to a man she doesn't love thrown on top.

Elsewhere, Georgiana learns that yet another man she allowed herself to care for is weak and untrustworthy. Clara comes clean about her and Edward's scheme to gaslight Esther only to abandon her own child in the aftermath. Colbourne stoically refuses to be honest about his feelings for Charlotte and departs Sanditon with the girls, after everyone agrees not to tell Leonora that Lennox is really her father. Even Fraser has to quit his army commission in order to stay behind and woo Allison, which should probably leave us wondering how the newlyweds plan to eat.